Business Analysis- The Future of Today’s Business
What is Business Analysis?
Business analysis (BA) is not a single methodology. Instead, a Business Analyst uses various skills, tools, and techniques to clarify and define a business problem or an opportunity. A BA requires working closely with all stakeholders and developing a solution that fully meets the business needs of today and tomorrow.
According to IIBA, “Business Analysis is the practice of enabling change in an organisational context, by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders.”
When is a Business Analyst required?
Companies bring business analysts on board not just to help facilitate solutions to problems and create business strategies but also to prepare the staff for the upcoming changes and reinforce those changes once they’ve taken place. However, driven by the rise in project complexity, business analysis is a crucial competency to a project’s success. Be it a SCRUM or waterfall, the business analyst wears various hats and is involved throughout the lifecycle of a project, except for Coding.
Does a Business Analyst propose a solution?
No. A Business Analyst is not responsible for delivering the solution, implementing the solution, and ensuring the solution is made available on time. However, they can help the business to assess the proposed solutions to determine how closely they meet stakeholder and solution requirements.
A Business Analyst will:
Determine the actual need of an organisation
- With BA: The business needs are understood so that the work is focused on the right problems.
- Without BA: Work is wasted on solutions that don’t meet the actual underlying needs of the organisation.
Ensure the business is prioritising the right projects
- With BA: The expected value of the work is well understood and affordable for the organisation.
- Without BA: The return on investment is not clear; stakeholders have conflicting expectations.
Define the project scope and defines the path to meet both short and long-term goals
- With BA: Clear current and future scope are defined. The right stakeholders are represented, contributing their information to meet the goals.
- Without BA: A lack of visibility into project tasks resulted in operational and financial overruns causing stakeholders to consider ending the project. Important stakeholders are missed; their information or goals are not well represented.
Perform process gap analysis
- With BA: Identify the current process and propose business process improvements.
- Without BA: Organisations may not have the chance to assess if things are working as efficiently as possible.
Assist the Project Manager in planning the right stories for the Sprint (SCRUM)
- With BA: Requirements are well understood, so the right efforts and scope can be defined.
- Without BA: Work is wasted on the wrong efforts; a different strategy could have achieved more.
Assist the technical team in providing the right solution
- With BA: An appropriate solution was selected, designed, tested, and well supported.
- Without BA: The solution does not meet actual needs; it is difficult or costly to test, operate, or support.
Overall, in today’s Agile world a BA will ensure smooth communication and standards between a vendor and a business. This is important as the consistency of standards and communication ensure greater clarity about the requirements, which leads to a far greater project success rate and a higher quality end-user experience.
To contact us and see how our highly skilled BA team can assist your business, get in touch today via [email protected]
Shanmugaraj Swaminathan
Business Analyst – Adactin Team